


Despise

by coeurgryffondor



Series: The way you look at me [2]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: F/M, Hetalia Countries Using Human Names, Infidelity, M/M, Past Self-Flagellation, Transgender Poland (Hetalia), no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-22
Updated: 2019-05-22
Packaged: 2020-03-09 21:02:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18924967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coeurgryffondor/pseuds/coeurgryffondor
Summary: 1993, him: His scars remind him that he is man. Her scar reminds him that she is divine.1993, her: How could he ever be filled with so much despise towards himself? How could she be filled with this much love for another?





	Despise

> If only you were to me like a brother,  
>      who was nursed at my mother’s breasts!  
>  Then, if I found you outside,  
>      I would kiss you,  
>      and no one would despise me.  
>  –Song of Songs 8:1

# 1993, him

Why does even he even have her phone number? Must have stolen it from someone — her brother, perhaps, or one of her lovers. The more things changed, the more they stayed the same, and Lithuania is full of Russian troops and Monaco is under French influence.

He rides the bus around Minsk for hours, pretending it’s Vilnius, which it isn’t; he hasn’t lived in Vilnius in years.

At least this time it’s your choice, Feliks’s voice echoes in his mind, which is what his best friend has said for the last two years, but the thing is — was it his choice? His wife wanted to live in Minsk, and Toris wanted to be a good husband.

Only one of them could get what they wanted.

Her phone number is written on a page at the back of his tattered journal he keeps in his pocket, filled with half-thought ramblings like “ball 1632” and “what is daven?” and “learn Monegasque.” That was a pretty fun ball, at least; Feliks had dressed like the woman he’d told Toris he was, and Toris had enjoyed the feeling of his wife in his arms, her ease, her beauty, her charm, her everything devoted to him as he was to her.

Maybe he’d been a good husband once; Feliks had said so. But Feliks hadn’t tried to reclaim being a woman in centuries, had instead married a woman that Toris hopes Feliks can tell his deepest secrets to as he once told the Lithuanian. They’re broken now, they can never go back, but at least they can move forward. Toris blames himself for not fighting harder for Felicja.

He gets off at a stop that’s vaguely familiar, and dials the number before his courage fails him. He was once a military officer, he was once feared on the battlefield; now he has a wife who broke her favorite mug throwing it at his head and an infant son he’s not sure he’ll ever see again. Toris blames himself for what his marriage has become.

It was Toris’s fault, after all: his wife had said so. He sometimes wonders how he lives with himself, and if he was mortal would he be a threat to himself?

The phone rings once, twice, thrice — how do you say the fourth entry in that sequence in English? Toris should write that down in his notebook, ask Alfred next time he saw him — then it stops ringing and a voice, unsteady and imperfect, says in French, “Hello? Who is this?”

God! he could die right now to hear her voice again, it has been literal centuries since he last heard her. He saw her, at the end of the nineteenth century, across the room, for maybe twenty seconds, saw her mouth move as she spoke with her brother, but her voice? It had only been that one day, the day that doesn’t get written in the notebook. That day doesn’t needed help being remembered.

“Hello?” There’s the sound of shifting, perhaps checking to make sure the connection is true. “Is someone–”

“Camille,” he interrupts, forcing himself to make a sound, and her name comes out… kind of sexy sounding, when he says it. He has only ever said it aloud when he masturbated, coming with a soft moan of her name. Perhaps it shows in the sound.

Breathing, deep and slightly unsteady, reaches his ear. They stay like that for several minutes, just breathing — just being, together, for the first time since that room all those centuries ago.

“Do you have a way to get here?” she asks, cautiously, in slow English.

Monaco? “I wouldn’t know how,” he answers truthfully.

There’s a pause, and the sound of scribbling, and then, “There will be a flight for you when you get to the airport.”

“Wh– what?” Toris isn’t sure what he’d wanted, when he’d called her, but he certainly hadn’t been expecting this.

“It should take maybe three hours.”

“You don’t have to–”

“Toris,” and her voice saying his name stops him dead.

They breathe again, for a long time.

“Thank you,” he whispers.

* * *

He knocks on the door, and there’s a shuffling sound, and he checks his watch and realizes it’s now almost two in the morning here. That would impress him if he hadn’t just flown on a private jet, then been escorted to a private car, that had taken him to a literal palace, then been escorted past said literal palace to a private suite of rooms in a building across the square.

He wasn’t in the Soviet Union anymore, that was for sure.

The door flies open as if in surprise, and Toris is stunned for a moment before his eyes shift down to her height and there she is.

Camille de Bonnefoy.

This time there’s no neck ruff, no stays, no kings or grand dukes: just a princess in her domain, wearing a simple dress that enhanced her majesty.

Her face is turned up to him, and her mouth is partially open as if about to speak, and she looks as if she might cry before she clears her throat and shakes her head and turns from his eyes and steps aside to let him in.

* * *

They sit on the couch, a distance between them. Camille is curled around its back, her legs tucked under her in a feminine way, her hair loose about her, falling around her face and glasses and shoulders. Toris, for his part, leans forward on his legs and bows his head and regrets everything — absolutely everything, except maybe for telling Feliks that he didn’t care if he was a man or woman, so long as he was his, and except maybe for his son. His son is wonderful.

The room is deep sighs, over and over. The room is moonlight pouring in from a single window, no lamps on. The room is regret and possibility and lost chances and something that sits on his tongue like blood, that acid tang he knows too well.

He’s ruined everything: why is he here ruining her?

“My marriage is over,” he whispers. It’s not for Camille’s benefit though; it’s for his own, to hear himself saying the words, to force himself to make those sounds aloud.

There’s a shifting, and then a warmth beside him. Camille doesn’t press against him; that would be too wrong, too intimate. Instead she’s beside him, a hand on his upper back, between his shoulder blades, and the other on his arm, her knee pressing against his leg.

He shrugs, and turns his head to look at her through the sheets of hair that fall around her face, and her glasses are gone now and she’s so beautiful and calm and in control and a queen, a real queen, unshakable and merciful. He imagines the Virgin Mary to be like this, though Camille is no young Jewish girl nor virgin.

But still: to his Catholic heart, she is salvation.

“Why are you here?” and it’s impressive that she can speak so quietly yet he can hear every sound. Must be something about French, he wouldn’t be able to do it in Lithuanian or Polish. And her question is no challenge, no accusation — not all the things his wife’s words carry — simply what it is, for a man who simply is what he is.

She’s leaning forward, towards him, maybe to see him better, he doesn’t know what her glasses are actually for now that he thinks about it. So he leans back, towards her, because he wants to look into those eyes forever that calm him and soothe him and make him feel like a man with a life worth living, those eyes that enchanted him centuries ago in a woman he has pined for since then.

“I don’t know,” Toris confesses into the night. Camille nods, and swallows, and licks her lips.

And like that, Toris Laurinaitis is lost and saved all at once.

Her arms are about his neck, her hands in his hair and on his back, as his wrap around that small waist of hers and pull her to him, onto him. Their lips crash together and God Almighty, Toris has been married twice and had several pretty lovers but none — not one — kissed him like this, or touched him like this, or made him feel alive like this. Camille shifts and he leans back and she’s straddling his lap so he grabs her ass to pull her closer to him, and they fit together so perfectly as she pulls at his long hair to tilt his head back, and he closes his eyes as she kisses his jaw and neck, and there is no other thought in his mind beyond Camille Camille Camille.

Somehow they’re standing, and somehow he’s kissing her as she leads him down a hallway, and then they’re in a bedroom and his clothes are being pulled off, and Toris isn’t in control of himself but also he’s not an observer outside his body as he has been before: instead it’s as if he is one with Camille, and where he ends and she begins is impossible to find, and when she moves he already knew she would because he moves too, with her, as one.

His chest is exposed, and he pulls off his belt and pushes down his pants, and at that she steps back and Toris is truly exposed under her gaze which is hungry and demanding and regal, and when her eyes find his, she smiles and lifts her dress over her head easily, and she is naked — she is naked — and she is the most glorious creation there ever was or ever will be.

He steps to her, slowly, and pushes down the rest of his clothing, stepping from it to stand before her just as naked. He allows her eyes to travel across his body that perhaps once was worthy of pride but now is scars and wounds and a time that once was, a duchy that once was — once was great, once was powerful, once was worthy of a queen like her.

She steps to him, slowly, and pushes herself against him, and then she tilts her head back and Toris can take it no longer, kissing her, pulling her close, feeling her hands go over the lines of his back. Some of those are from battle. Some of those are from torture. Some of those are from abuse. Some of those are from self-flagellation.

His scars remind him that he is man.

Camille is smooth skin beneath his demanding fingers, and long blonde hair tossed this way and that, and soft mewls of pleasure that remind Toris that once he was a lover, a great lover, before he finds a scar on her that makes him draw back, Camille resting a hand atop his on the line.

“He stabbed me,” she breathes and she doesn’t need to say who, “because I would not give myself to him fully,” and she doesn’t need to say what she wouldn’t give. Her other hand rests on Toris’s cheek. “I was saving myself for you.”

Her scar reminds him that she is divine.

Soft giggles greet his ear when he lifts her, still muscular despite the last century, laying her out atop the sheets. Soft sighs greet his ear when he moves to her, between her parted legs and leaning over her when she reaches out for him. Soft moans greet his ear when he kisses her throat and jaw and the corner of her mouth, a hand fondling one of her breasts

And Toris makes love to her, kissing her, touching her, licking her, filling her. She holds onto him tightly, wrapped about him as he moves above her, in her, with her. He sweats from the heat and the effort, and she arches into him, her hips, her breasts, and everything is beyond what he could ever express or imagine or hope for or comprehend, everything is so perfect in a way that Toris doesn’t deserve, Camille is so perfect in a way that Toris doesn’t deserve.

She comes with a scream, gripping him more tightly than anyone has ever held on to him, and it makes him feel like a man, needed and strong and protecting and providing.

He comes with a moan, his mouth against her ear, because he cannot look at her face now streaked with tears, not yet. He needs a moment first, to savor the feeling of being inside her, of filling her, of imaging that Camille de Bonnefoy is his wife and that he is her husband and that they might have their own child and life would be good.

Life would be good.

Rolling to the side, she groans as he removes himself from her, allowing herself to be pulled to him. She doesn’t sob, simply continues crying, and she smiles at him as she catches her breath, their faces close together as they press together.

Toris pushes some hair from her face, and kisses her gently, and whispers, “I love you, Camille.”

“I love you too, Toris, only you.”

He rolls again, and now she lays half atop him, and in the shadows he can’t see much but he can see the glow of the goddess before him. “If you asked me for forever,” Toris breathes, “I’d give it to you,” and in that moment he means it, more than he’s ever meant anything he’s ever said. His marriage was over, his son would forever be a stranger to him, his best friend had a life separate from him: everything Toris had, everything Toris could have, was before him.

But it’s also late, and he’s exhausted, and he closes his eyes and lips kiss the side of his nose.

Forever.

Her words echo in his mind, and Toris is — for once — at peace.

* * *

# 1993, her

She blinks and realizes she’s been daydreaming about a room in Paris and a brunet with long hair and a beard and a neck ruff and what might have been if she had drawn him from the room and to her. Not that Francis would have let her get that far: her brother was protective, for better or worse, but Camille loved him all the same for it.

The more things changed, the more they stayed the same: Camille needed Francis as Monaco needed France, and Toris Laurinaitis belonged to another as Lithuania is dominated by another.

Soon there would be meetings followed by meetings, but Francis and Arthur would be there, and she would join them not as a visitor or observer but as an equal, as a diplomat from the UN member state of Monaco. But before that there was the paperwork, and my God was there paperwork.

Not that Camille minds terribly: she loved being productive, she loved hiding her anxiety and worry in calculations and research. It passed the time when she had to be away from her family whom she missed but whom she also didn’t miss: little Pierre constantly demanded attention from his fathers, and soon there would be another baby too. Marianne, Francis had told her with such happiness that she’d wanted to capture her brother like that forever, Marianne Rose to round out their family, Alfred Francis and Mathieu Arthur and Charles Pierre. All her brother had ever wanted was a little girl, and now he and Arthur would have their sweet princess.

They weren’t exactly a typical family, but they were Camille’s and she was theirs.

If only, though, she had one of her own.

No! That thought she pushes aside, because it doesn’t matter and it’s not important. Mathieu has called her « Tatie Camille » since she met him in 1869, when he’d visited his father for the first time since Arthur had been forced to separate them. (Camille hadn’t talked to him for several decades because of that, though she knew it wasn’t all his fault.) And Alfred, who had taken longer to come around to what Arthur and Francis had told him of a childhood he no longer recalled clearly, had fallen right into being the eldest son and brother when Pierre was born, which had allowed Camille to get to know the young man she had only met a few times in passing before, as they stayed up feeding the baby while his fathers slept.

This was her family, more than she and Francis had ever thought they’d have, her brother free to love as he did without fear, to be with the man he loved as if they were married. And Camille knows one day they will be, no matter how long it takes, and she knows she’ll be the maid of honor when Francis and Arthur finally tie the knot.

But still.

But still.

A brunet crosses her mind, as does a white dress followed by a small bundle that squirms in her arms. But those things will not be, no matter how long she has. Toris Laurinaitis is another’s, and thou shalt not covet thy distant neighbor's husband.

Would she have been a good wife? She has been lover, before, to Roderich who knew the game and so was her favorite, to Arthur whom she shared a love of Francis with, to Antonio who made her feel alive with how he fell over her. To Gilbert, who was more cultured than he wanted others to know, and to Berwald, who spoke more elegantly than any man she’d met, and to Ivan Ivanovich, who was gentler with her in bed than any man she’d laid with.

And to the king, but she did not think of that.

Paperwork. She had been doing paperwork. How her mind wandered these days.

In the distance is a phone ringing. Francis! She leaps up, tripping over the leg of the table, papers flying everywhere, lifting the phone…

But the other side of the line, for that split second, is quiet. That can’t be her brother, someone was always screaming in that house.

“Hello?” and she can hear her own breathlessness, her exhaustion causing her voice to waiver. “Who is this?”

There’s a silence that greets her. Maybe it was Francis but his end of the line wasn’t coming through. Pierre had taken to yanking at everything he could, which amused his aunt so long as it wasn’t her hair being yanked at. Instinctively she checks her own connection, though the Bonnefoy-Kirkland storm hasn’t blown through her apartment in several weeks.

“Hello?” Maybe it was about the UN matter, between her nephews and that, Camille’s life was no longer her own. “Is someone–”

“Camille,” and his voice stops her dead.

My God: Toris.

His voice is low and rough and sexy, husky almost, as if aroused. Immediately Camille feels hot, pressing her thighs together as inner muscles clench. She imagines his hands on her body, his pleasure at discovering she wasn’t wearing anything beneath the short dress she’d thrown on so she could run down the road to pick up leeks and Parmesan. You’d think she hadn’t been lover to kings and emperors before, the way a man saying her name threw her off balance.

Her breathing is uneven, she can hear it herself, but so is his on the other side of the line, and Camille enjoys it, the almost silence of a man thinking of her, of this man whom she cannot stop thinking about despite the centuries between them — this man, thinking about her.

Suddenly her mouth is saying things before her mind can make sense of what and why, because Camille de Bonnefoy was a woman of action, damn it. Roderich was hers for centuries because she did something, and it had been work to steal his attention from his beloved Erzsébet, but she had done it. And she could do it again.

“Do you have a way to get here?” and it comes out in English for some reason. Alfred had told her about the time he’d spent with Toris, unaware of how he tortured his aunt with his easy laughs and causal stories that she drank up like the addict she is.

“I wouldn’t know how.”

Hands frantically push papers to the floor, finding a pen to make a note. “There will be a flight for you when you get to the airport.” She’d never had sex with Ludwig — the German had been her brother’s longest continuous, monogamous relationship, she wasn’t going in for sloppy seconds there — but that didn’t mean she couldn’t get him to arrange for his private jet to fly around tonight while he was on business in Moscow. He was so endearing and youthful in that regard, even now.

“Wh– what?” In his voice she can hear how crazy this is, but Camille cannot stop: something compels her.

She could also charter a plane, that might be even faster. “It should take maybe three hours.”

“You don’t have to–”

“Toris,” and his name grounds her. Her breasts ache and her thighs ache and her everything aches, for him, this man she has pined after for centuries because she is an addict and he is her drug, and she wanted to have someone to look at her the way Francis looked at Arthur, and only Toris had ever done that.

Only Toris had laid her bare before, and she wanted him here to do it again.

“Thank you,” and he hangs up, the low hum of the disconnected telephone line her only witness to what she was doing.

* * *

Papers fly everywhere, and she had called home at some point — home! of course it was wherever her brother was, not where she was — and told Arthur she would be occupied for the night, could they not call her until she called them again? And her brother-in-law is too much a gentleman to ask why, simply agrees as his son starts crying and Francis in the background murmurs something about “not my turn.”

She’s standing in the hallway threshold, looking around the room. Was everything tidy? Was everything clean? She’d poisoned Antonio and shot Ivan Ivanovich, yet here she was, worrying about the impression she would make.

But this was Toris, coming to her intimate place. Coming to Monaco. Coming to her, for her.

There’s a knock on the door, and she somehow takes the weirdest path around the furniture to the door before yanking it open, too desperate to play it calm when her heart was racing and her anxiety sky high.

And here he is.

Toris Laurinaitis.

This time there’s no beard, no neck ruff, no kings or grand dukes: just a man in a foreign place, wearing a simple look of awe that recalled his nobility.

His face is turned down towards her, and Camille opens her mouth to speak, but now her mouth has no words, and her throat tenses as her heart reels at all the things she wants to say despite the wedding ring on his hand, so she clears her throat to keep away tears and shakes her head to keep away dangerous ideas and turns from his eyes to keep away her burning desire and steps aside to let him in, because she can no longer keep him away.

She can no longer hide under her brother’s care, pretending she is content to be little more than a pretty mistress. She’s a woman of action, damn it!

* * *

He sits on the couch, a distance between them. Camille curls up on the other end, too fearful of getting too close, tucking her legs under her, smoothing her short skirt down, playing with her hair to feel some confidence that at least it looks fine even if the rest of her is a mess. And she leans against the back of the couch as he leans forwards, arms on those strong legs, hands raking through that luxurious hair, and he’s so beautiful like this, so sensual, so alive and here and present — but Camille can only think of her regret. Her regret for having never said anything sooner, between then and now: more than four centuries to speak up. Some woman of action she was.

The room is deep sighs, over and over, his more audible than hers. Moonlight pours in, over him, and there’s no need for lamps when Toris seems to glow before her like a divine being, putting her glasses on the coffee table so that she could better appreciate his almost luminescence. Regret pours in, over her, and her heart racing causes her throat to clench because there’s a possibility with him here, there’s a lost chance come back around, but there’s something else too, and she doesn’t know what it is.

She’s feared for so long: could she do this?

“My marriage is over,” he whispers suddenly. His words — his French — take her aback. She had hoped that he would not think of her as only an extramarital affair before she hears the echo after his words, the silence that follows, and in it there is pain. So much pain.

Arthur once showed her how magnets attract each other; like a magnet, she feels herself pulled to his side. She resists touching him too much, her addiction is too strong, but cannot hold back a hand on his back to steady him, and one on his arm to steady herself.

Though nothing else has been said, Toris shrugs, and his head turns towards her as if awaiting some response, a knight before his lady awaiting some command, He’s so calm despite his tension, and he’s so soft despite his hard edges, and he’s so beautiful despite his anguish, and he’s so real despite everything in her mind saying this was a dream. She imagines he would do anything she asked of him, like a fairy tale or an ode to courtly love, though Toris wears no shining armor nor is he Prince Charming.

But still: to her aching heart, he is salvation.

“Why are you here?” and she wonders if he’d heard her, if she’d spoken too quietly. Francis complained about her doing that, that she spoke too softly, too quietly, too much like a woman who has been subjected to the harsh rule of harsh men. They both know which of their kind is to blame for that, and Francis is not innocent.

To ask any louder, though, would be a betrayal, and Camille no longer wishes to be a traitor.

She leans forward, towards him, because his hair covers the lines of his face that she wishes to study, and because he is so much more beautiful this close, closer even than he was in that room all those centuries ago. And he leans back, towards her, sitting up so she can see the man before her who is reserved and abused and mild mannered and acquiescent and so many other things that Camille understands because she, too, has been those things. It makes her want him even more, muscles clenching, breathing becoming ragged.

“I don’t know,” Toris confesses into the night. Camille nods, because she doesn’t know either; she swallows, because something was forming in her throat, distracting her from the man before her. Without thought she licks her lips and the man before her stares at her mouth before looking at her with a face so open, so raw and bare, that she can see herself reflected back.

With that, Camille de Bonnefoy is lost and saved in a single moment.

She wraps her arms about his neck, feeling his hair between her fingers or else his warmth through his shirt on his back; his arms wrap around her waist, still small from years of stays and corsets and the demands of men. But there is a comfort to his arms’ masculine strength, pulling her onto him, straddling a leg as their lips — oh God Almighty! — as their lips finally meet and crash together and Camille has kissed kings and emperors but none — not one — kissed her like this, or touched her like this, or made her feel alive like this. But it’s not enough, she needs more to rut again, more to rub against, more to press against herself; she moves to straddle his lap and immediately her grabs her ass, his hands so good on the flesh, and she’s pulled closer until his erection grinds against her center and yes!

It is absolute perfection, Camille unable to resist pulling at his long hair so that he tilts his head back, her mouth falling to his jaw, to his neck, to that sweet skin that she wants to touch forever, her mind nothing more than the single echoing thought of Toris Toris Toris.

Somehow they’re standing, and somehow he keeps kissing her as she leads him backwards down the hallway, and then they’re in her bedroom and Toris is wearing much too much, hands moving together to pull clothes off, Camille desperate to finally have the man she has wanted since 1573, now that he is here where he ought to be: in her room, with her alone.

She has wanted this for too long: there is no thought, there is only instinct.

Yet Camille understands what she is doing, even if she doesn’t know it — even if she is not necessarily in direct control over her actions, they are at least hers.

It’s almost as if she and Toris are one, the way God intended man and woman to be, and where she ends and he begins is impossible to find, and when he moves she moves too as if she already knew they were going to do that, together, as one. And when his chest is exposed, she drinks him in like milk, and when he pulls off his belt and pushes down his pants, Camille steps back to take him in, hungry for more nourishment, demanding more with a most undignified and vulgar gleam in her eyes. But when those eyes find his, she softens and smiles: if he could give himself over to her in the light of the moon, so could she, and she wanted to, so much, her choice to do this. Hands lift her dress over her head, hair sliding down onto her back, and she is naked — she is naked — before the only man she has maybe, possibly, ever loved.

Before him, she is herself.

Camille de Bonnefoy.

A woman with a heart.

He steps to her, slowly, and the way his eyes take in her form only makes her heart race more, her eyes falling down to watch him remove the rest of his clothing. And there he is, before her, as naked as she is, as free of this world and their curse as she is now. She takes in his body that is lean and toned, the mark of a nobleman who earned his privilege, a military man who proved his courage, a duchy that once was the largest place in all of Europe — a man who once was, and still is, and could be hers.

She steps to him, and presses herself against him, and then Camille tips her head back so that he can kiss her, arms suffocatingly tight as they pull her to him; her hands snake around to his back, slithering over thin lines and thick scars that go this way and that, and she wonders if these are all from battles or if perhaps he once was as Catholic as her brother, once filled with as much hate for himself in a moment of weakness as her brother was, whom she walked in on flagellating himself.

How could he ever be filled with so much despise towards himself?

Toris’s hands ghost her skin, pressing here and there for more, and their heads tilt this way and that, and she moans into his mouth because it feels so good to be pleasured as a woman by a man who was here simply because, as lovers do — until his fingers find where the skin is not smooth, and he draws back, but Camille rests a hand atop his to keep him there.

“He stabbed me,” she breathes without thought, not bothering to clarify who she meant, “because I would not give myself to him fully.” She would hate him forever, she could never forgive him that, but she doesn’t want to think of him and what he did to her; she rests her other hand on Toris’s cheek, to know that he is the one here.

And then she confesses that which she swore she never would reveal about her heart.

“I was saving myself for you.”

How could she be filled with this much love for another?

A beat passes before he lifts her unexpectedly, and she giggles to be treated like a delicate, virgin bride carried in the strong arms of her groom, placing her on her bed. She sighs to feel him finally above her, between her legs, above her body, in her arms. She moans to feel his lips on her throat and jaw and the corner of her mouth, a hand touching one of her breasts.

He makes love to her — love like Camille has never felt before. She can do little more than grip him tightly, hold him close, for fear this is a dream and he will be back in Belarus with his wife and son while she is in an airport lounge with her brother and brother-in-law and nephew. Because he is here, and she wants to memorize every moment of this: Toris above her, Toris in her, Toris with her.

Her hands slide across his back, sweat forming, but it turns her on more as he fills her over and over and over, the sweet ache of his pulling out, the indescribable completeness of him pushing in, the beating of her heart and the filling of her body with his manhood and this love that she hasn’t been able to shake in centuries no matter how ludicrous and inexplicable it has always been. Instead of logic, she arches into him, because it feels good, and he touches her, and it feels good, and it is all beyond what she had imagined, it feels better than good, but Camille doesn’t deserve this man after all that she has done. Toris is so perfect in a way that Camille doesn’t deserve, kind where she is ruthless, honest where she is raised eyebrows, committed where she is alone. He belongs to another, and yet she clings to him, coming with a scream, holding him as close as she can as if they might become one and this moment never end, she might always feel so human, so alive, so beautiful and valuable and equal and seen. She weeps for the perfection of this moment and this man, this blessing from God.

He comes with a moan, sticky in her, and it begins to drip out even as he continues thrusting, and his mouth is against her ear, almost causing Camille to cry out again, crying harder at the way he says her name with such adoration, as if it was a prayer, as if Toris Laurinaitis was her husband and she his wife and they were conceiving their own child and life would be as it ought to be.

The world would be as it ought to be.

Though she loves the weight of a man atop her — it stills her anxiety, for some reason — she doesn’t resist when Toris rolls them to the side, though she does groan as he pulls himself out of her, more of his cum dripping from her. Her crying, at least, is calming down though tears still flow, and she smiles at him, his face still close to hers even now, his body still pressed against hers even now.

He pushes some hair from her face before kissing her as a lover ought to, gently and sweetly and kindly, and whispers, “I love you Camille.”

There is no hesitation: only love.

“I love you too, Toris, only you.”

He rolls again, and she can drape her body across his, and at this angle she can’t see much of his face but she can feel his heart beating beneath her ear.

“If you asked me for forever,” and his chest rumbles, “I’d give it to you,” and in that moment Camille knows he means it, know it’s the most honest thing a man has ever said to her. She is a whore with a long list of discarded lovers, a cynic with anxiety, a forgotten woman in a forgotten nation: everything Camille had, everything Camille could have, is before her as she shifts to sit up and look at him.

His eyes are closed and his breathing deepening with sleep; she leans in to kiss the side of his nose, breathing, “Amžinai,” as gently as she can. Were he awake she’d ask if her carefully learned Lithuanian is any good, but for tonight it is enough.

Tonight Camille is — for once — at peace.


End file.
